1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to determining the compressibility factors for gas and liquid components of a multiphase fluid flowstream for use in determining the gas and liquid component fractions of the fluid.
2. Background
My U.S. Pat. No. 4,852,395 issued Aug. 1, 1989 and assigned to the assignee of the present invention describes a multi-phase fluid flow measuring system wherein, in particular, a mixture of gas, oil and water is acted on to determine the gas fraction and the oil and water fractions, respectively. The methodology associated with the system described in the patent requires the determination of a gas compressibility factor and the compressibility coefficients of the respective liquid components of the liquid phase of the fluid. Although a "one-time" or infrequent determination of these factors may be sufficient for some metering applications, it is advantageous to more frequently determine these compressibility coefficients due to changing compositions of the fluids being metered so as to more accurately determine the various fluid component fractions of the overall fluid flowstream. The present invention provides a solution to this problem.